Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

Science blogs

EVENTS

Russian Wingnuts Want Alaska Back — Over Gay Marriage

A group of Russian Orthodox wingnuts has filed a lawsuit in that country seeking to invalidate the sale of Alaska to the United States because President Obama now supports gay marriage. Say what? Yep, you read that right. Because there might be former Russians still in Alaska 150 years later and they might not like that.

US President Barack Obama must have known that his support of gay marriage would bring him trouble. But of all possible repercussions, a demand to roll back Alaska’s 1867 sale to the United States was one he was unlikely to have seen coming.

And yet that was the very claim that an ultraconservative religious group made in a Moscow arbitrage court, citing the need to protect fellow Christians from sin.

Obama’s alleged plans to legalize the “so-called same-sex marriage” threaten the freedom of religion of Alaska’s Orthodox Christians, who “would never accept sin for normal behavior,” the nongovernmental group Pchyolki (“Bees”) said.

“We see it as our duty to protect their right to freely practice their religion, which allows no tolerance to sin,” the group said in a statement on their website.

I think we should offer to settle the case and just give them back Sarah Palin and her family.

Gee… Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the claim was that the Czar had no right to sell the “people’s land” to the US and, therefore, the sale of Alaska to the US was invalid and they wanted it back.

Is it really that easy to get such an old contract invalidated? If so, I happen to know of a certain Slavic country, I’m not naming names, which sold its soul to a certain church against false promises of salvation several centuries ago. If we could get that contract thrown out, it would be a huge boon to humanity…

Since Russia is an authoritarian pseudo-democracy I anticipate many American authoritarians might view the country favourably (until they had to actually live there). After all, everything in Russia is for sale -police, judges, politicians- so it should come close to Ayn Rand’s ideal (yes, I know some libertarians are not that crazy, I am referring to the foaming mouth squad).

Let us make a deal where the Russians compensate the USA for Alaskan oil fields by providing a home for all the wing nuts.

Given the rising anti-gay bigotry of Russia I keep hearing about, I had considered admonishing American anti-gay bigots to “go back to Russia” based on their apparent admiration of Stalin’s criminalization of homosexuality combined with an attempt at causing cognitive dissonance by the implicit assertion that they have more in common with an authoritarian Communist than a liberal like me.

Now that idea is looking that much more topical since I can reference a more recent event.

So…how long will it take for Sarah Palin to say the Russians were emboldened by her quitting/not-quitting as Alaska’s governor? I mean, she stops looking at Russia from her house, and look what they get up to!

See, her pretending to have a role in defending Alaskan airspace against Russian incusrion is what kept them at bay so long. Now the evil commie libruls blew teh big secret, and the Russians see us as weak…

They could put her up in Provideniya. Then she could see her backyard from her backyard.

How about they pur her up in one of those GRU-Spetsnaz camps where spies learn how to be American and talk coherently in English? She might FINALLY learn something about how her country really works. That’d be a win for everyone! (Then she could come back and work for her new Christofascist masters — which she was already doing anyway.)

If the Russians get away with this I bet Native Americans will be licking their chops.
From what I understand, a lot of times whites got the village idiot of a tribe to sign away their land or else got someone with no authority drunk and got his mark to make a land sale a “legal” transaction. (At least legal to the point a judge would agree with them, and if the pesky Indians objected there was always Andrew Jackson to be sent to “reason” with them).
Natives’ claims should be much more ironclad than the Russians, who were at least paid. That wasn’t always the case with Native Americans.

Let’s see: 586,412 square miles is 375,303,680 acres. Each acre was sold at about 2 cents in 1867*, which is equivalent to $4.80 in 2011 Dollars. So that’s $1,801,457,664!
I think they can just about afford that.
Dingo
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* Or $7.2 million (1867) Dollars. (Unsurprisingly the US paid by cheque).